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ARS Home » Plains Area » Grand Forks, North Dakota » Grand Forks Human Nutrition Research Center » Healthy Body Weight Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #294975
Title: Nutritional Epigenomics: A Portal to Disease Prevention

Author
item Choi, Sang-Woon
item Larson, Kate
item MARTINEZ, J - University Of Navarra
item FRISO, S - University Of Verona
item SCHALINSKE, K - Iowa State University

Submitted to: Advances in Nutrition
Publication Type: Proceedings
Publication Acceptance Date: 7/18/2013
Publication Date: 9/1/2013
Citation: Choi, S., Claycombe, K.J., Martinez, J.A., Friso, S., Schalinske, K.L. 2013. Nutritional Epigenomics: A Portal to Disease Prevention. Advances in Nutrition. 4:530-532.

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Nutrients are more than simply food ingredients that are essential for the maintenance of our body functions. Nutrients can directly or indirectly interact with genes to affect their expression. Changes in gene expression by nutrients can have many downstream results, including alterations in disease risk, stress response, and metabolism. However, to optimize the use of nutrients for maintaining our health or preventing certain diseases, more knowledge is needed regarding the impact of nutrients in our body, especially at the molecular levels that affect critical gene function. Epigenetics is a biological phenomenon that involves the regulation of gene expression independent of the DNA base sequence. Because nutrients and bioactive food components can modify epigenetic phenomena and subsequently modulate physiologic and pathologic processes in our body, the field of nutritional epigenetics is further elucidating the nature of diet-gene interactions, thus providing support for the role of nutrition in acquiring new phenotype. Aging is also associated with substantial changes in epigenetic patterns and recent work has implicated epigenetic mechanisms in the etiology of many age-associated diseases. In this symposium, invited speakers provided a forum to discuss how nutrients and diet modify individual genes as well as the whole genome, thereby affecting the most prevalent public health problems such as obesity, diabetes mellitus, aging, and cancer.